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Cyera Signs $1B Letter of Intent to Acquire Oasis Security to Secure AI Agents
The cybersecurity unicorn is using its massive cash reserves to buy the identity management startup, aiming to bridge the gap between data security and autonomous machine identities.
By Startup news · Published · Updated
Israeli cybersecurity unicorn Cyera has signed a letter of intent (LOI) to acquire Oasis Security in a deal valued at approximately $1 billion. In addition to being one of the largest cybersecurity acquisitions ever involving an Israeli startup, the transaction is expected to generate a significant payday for Oasis's 170 employees, who are set to receive more than $100 million from the exercise of their stock options.
The two companies share several major investors, including Cyberstarts, Sequoia Capital, and Accel. In Oasis's latest funding round, completed earlier this year, the company was valued at approximately $700 million. Cyera, which recently raised $600 million at a $12 billion valuation, generates an estimated $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and has been growing at a rate of several hundred percent annually.
Since its founding, Oasis has raised approximately $195 million across three funding rounds. The company raised about $75 million in its Seed and Series A rounds, led by Cyberstarts, Sequoia Capital, and Accel. Its $120 million Series B round was led by Craft Ventures, with participation from existing investors as well as Frontline Ventures and Leaders Fund.
The company's investors, who collectively own an estimated 50%-60% of Oasis, are expected to receive between $500 million and $600 million from the transaction. Founders Danny Brickman and Amit Zimerman, who together held an estimated 20%-30% stake in the company, are expected to receive between $200 million and $300 million, primarily in cash and Cyera shares.
Oasis employees are also expected to benefit significantly. The company's employee stock option plan, representing an estimated 10%-15% of the company's equity, is expected to generate proceeds of between $100 million and $150 million. Employees are also expected to receive additional retention packages, including Cyera equity.
Following the acquisition, Oasis will continue to operate as an independent business unit within Cyera, leading the company's non-human identity security business. The two companies' engineering teams will integrate their platforms, while Cyera's global sales organization is expected to accelerate adoption of Oasis's technology among hundreds of large enterprises worldwide.
The acquisition is designed to address one of cybersecurity's fastest-growing challenges: the explosion in the number of AI agents and other non-human identities operating inside enterprise environments. Combining Cyera's data security platform with Oasis's non-human identity management technology will create a unified security platform that connects data security with identity governance.
The importance of the acquisition reflects a broader shift in enterprise computing. In the past, access to corporate systems was dominated by human users. Today, as organizations migrate to the cloud and deploy autonomous AI agents, the number of non-human identities is growing at an unprecedented pace.
In a typical Fortune 500 company, there are now dozens, and in some cases hundreds, of non-human identities for every human employee. These include API keys, service accounts, access tokens, machine identities, and AI agents with broad permissions to access sensitive information, analyze data, and perform actions autonomously.